Instant Pot Beef Stew with Bourbon and Root Vegetables

Eating a Varied Diet

There are so many factors that determine what we eat in my house. Pleasing everyone is extremely difficult to do. There are two meat eating males in the house and one vegan who won’t even look at meat. For the most part, I’m happy to go along with either diet as long as it tastes good.

Even though I grew up eating red meat almost daily, I don’t cook with red meat on a regular basis. Beef is expensive and often requires a lot of cooking the time. These factors make beef more of a special occasion ingredient. Chickpeas are much cheaper than beef these days…

There’s more than one way to turn cheaper cuts of beef into a delicious dinner

Still, there are times when I crave a perfectly grilled steak or comforting stew and I head on down to the store to buy some premium Alberta beef. Steaks are now reserved for special occasions only, while cheaper cuts like short ribs, mince, and stew meat. Generally, the cheaper the cut of beef, the longer cooking time it will need to turn into a tasty, edible dish. As a busy mom, time is not always on my side…I usually have several appointments during the day which means making meals within the carved out little chunks of home time. This is where the Instant Pot comes in so handy! I’ve already posted my first Instant Pot made meal for Pork Medallions with Herbs and Mushrooms and it was so well read that I decided to post more of my Instant Pot experiments with you all. From the comments, I feel like I may have sold several Instant Pots and now I’m kicking myself for not being an Amazon.ca affiliate!

This recipe began as a beef stew, but ended up as a ‘clean out the pantry/fridge’ mish mash. There were ‘elder’ cipollini onions in the pantry which was hanging out with a semi funky rutabaga. Also, I would really like to know who put two slices of cooked bacon in the fridge! It was probably me. I added bourbon because I thought it would highlight the sweetness of the rutabaga and other root vegetables and it was a nice change from the usual splash of red wine.

Method

Combine flour with salt and pepper on a plate.

Pour 2 tbsp oil into the Instant Pot insert and turn on sauté.

Dredge 1/3 stewing beef in the flour mixture and place in Instant Pot insert. Brown in batches, removing browned beef before starting the next batch. You can also use a separate stove top frying pan for this step.

Remove all browned beef and add beef broth to insert/frying pan to deglaze. Scrape with a spatula to grab all the tasty bits.

Transfer beef to Instant Pot insert, wipe rim and fit lid on the Instant Pot, ensuring valve is set to ‘sealing’. On manual mode, set Instant Pot to ‘high pressure’ and add 10 minutes to the timer. After ten minutes, release the pressure and check the beef. If it isn’t tender, give it another ten under high pressure.

Once the beef is tender, add the vegetables, bay leaves, and some extra herbs and cook on low pressure for 12 minutes. Release the pressure and check to make sure the vegetables are cooked through.

Hey there (thanks for stopping by my humble musings) … I too love a good stew (s’Tuesday … bwahahahaha) 🙂 but seriously, … please enlighten me on an “instant pot” … I feel kind of silly for asking but, I’m not familiar with that term … are you referring to a digital pressure cooker ??
CHEERS and thanks for sharing … 🙂